I've been sitting on this item all day. Technically, it's about patents and the like, and even I understand I've been beating this dead horse so often it almost looks like it's alive. However, this is an interesting opinion piece by Craig Hockenberry, long-time employee at The Iconfactory, one of my favourite software development houses - these guys breath software and beautiful design, and employ one of my favourite artists, David Lanham. The gist of his story? Software patents are killing the independent developer scene.

And for every one of those stories you'll find one of small developers who've been screwed over because they neglected to cover their butts with patents only to have one of the big software houses stomp them.

we have vocal individuals who are actually actively advocating software patents, only because not doing so would put them at odds with their pet companies

And we have equally vocal individuals calling for them to be abolished because doing so puts them in line with their pet companies. See, works both ways that accusation.

If things like a grid of icons can be patented, claims that it is impossible to write a single line of code without violating a software patent suddenly become a whole lot more believable

Which is why trivial TRIVIAL, you know, T R I V I A L!!! patents of ANY type should be abolished and patent periods significantly shortened, among other PATENT REFORMS. But throwing the baby out with the bath water would be a LOT worse for small software developers in the long term than the current situation.

Why is it that anyone whose opinion differs from yours, and can look at things from various angles, including one of actually having been there and done that, rather than just the googly eyed one, is always evil incarnate?

And for every one of those stories you'll find one of small developers who've been screwed over because they neglected to cover their butts with patents only to have one of the big software houses stomp them.

Come back when the legal fees of filing a patent isn't in the tens of thousands of your favourite currency. Then maybe the small guys could defend themselves.